Staff

Across the country, the Center’s staff reflects our belief that great leadership potential exists in the communities we seek to serve.

We are from red states and blue; we are both youthful and seasoned; and we represent the rich diversity of America’s immigrants, recent and from decades past, as well as its native population. Together, we work with vigor and vision to end poverty and exclusion in America.

Wendoly Marte | Field Organizer

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“If we have learned anything in life is that the primary factor in everything is the human being, as well as his or her quality and spirit. Those who have faith and hope in the possibilities of humankind are those who will push it forward” – José María Arizmendiarrieta

Mayron Payes | Senior Organizer

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Deirdra Reed | Senior Organizer

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“My philosophy is such that I am not going to vote against the oppressed. I have been oppressed, and so I am always going to have a vote for the oppressed, regardless of whether that oppressed is black or white or yellow or the people of the Middle East, or what. I have that feeling.” – Septima Clark

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Aida Cuadradro | Field Organizer

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“Woe to those who make unjust laws,
to those who issue oppressive decrees,
to deprive the poor of their rights
and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people,
making widows their prey
and robbing the fatherless.” Isaiah 10

Ben Hanna | National Political Field Director

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Rommel Sandino | Northeast Regional Organizer

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“Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed. You cannot un-educate the person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore.” –
Cesar Chavez

Electoral Team

Chris Torres | National Political Director

• Franco Caliz-Aguilar: | Electoral Organizer

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“Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change a world that yields most painfully to change.” – Robert Kennedy

Erick Pleitez | Electoral Data Manager

Executive Office

Deepak Bhargava | President

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“If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle.” – Frederick Douglass

Kyle Grassi | Project Manager

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Terican Gross | Executive Coordinator

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“Read my letter to the old folks, and give my love to them, and tell my brothers to be always watching unto prayer, and when the good old ship of Zion comes along, to be ready to step aboard.” – Harriet Tubman

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Deepak Pateriya | Chief of Staff

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“Only people with hope will struggle. If people are in trouble, if people are suffering and exploited and want to get out from under the heel of oppression, if they have hope that it can be done, if they can see a path that leads to a solution, a path that makes sense to them and is consistent with their beliefs and their experience, then they’ll move. But it must be a path that they’ve started clearing. They’ve got to know the direction in which they are going and have a general idea of the kind of society they’d like to have.” – Myles Horton (from The Long Haul)

Rita Medina | Senior Legislative Associate

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“I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality, and freedom for their spirits.” — Martin Luther King, Jr.

Nancy Trevino | Digital Campaigns Manager, Immigration

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“To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beautiy to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try to understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget.” – Arundhati Roy

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Susan Rightsell | Deputy Director of Institutional Advancement

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“Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.”― Martin Luther King Jr.

Janice Wielinski | Donor Database Manager

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Ghazala Salam | Major Gifts Manager

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“Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.” Frederick Douglass

Trevor Bass | Senior Accounting Manager

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Tamika Dillard | Human Resources Generalist

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“Good done anywhere is good done everywhere. For a change, start by speaking to people rather than walking by them like they’re stones that don’t matter. As long as you’re breathing, it’s never too late to do some good.” -Maya Angelou

Marcia Glasgow | Facilities & Administrative Services Manager

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“I’m grateful for being here, for being able to think, for being able to see, for being able to taste, for appreciating love – for knowing that it exists in a world so rife with vulgarity, with brutality and violence, and yet love exists. I’m grateful to know that it exists.” ― Maya Angelou

Amber Hobbs | Senior Technology Support Manager

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Darnetta Hollis | Operations Coordinator

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“No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.” ― Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom

Tony Nam | Project Finance Manager

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“There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening/that is translated through you into action,/ and because there is only one of you in all time,/this expression is unique./If you block it,/it will never exist through any other medium/and be lost./The world will not have it./It is not your business to determine how good it is;/nor how valuable it is;/nor how it compares with other expressions./It is your business to keep it yours, clearly and directly,/to keep the channel open.” – Martha Graham in a letter to Agnes DeMille

Linda Nguyen | Director of Talent Acquisition & Development

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“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening, that is translated through you into action,And because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. If you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost.The world will not have it.It is not your business to determine how good it is,Nor how it compares to other expressions.It is simply your business to keep the channel open.” – Martha Graham